So I have been experiencing this issue for awhile now. Steam normally boots up instantly. Click on a game and it loads...instantly. For the past 4 months though when I turn steam on it takes about 2-3 minutes before I see it actually load up. So I click the steam icon and then nothing happens at all but 3-4 minutes later steam pops up on the screen and is ready to be used. The next issue is games. Some games when I click the icon they load up immediately like they should but other games when I click them they take 3-4 minutes or longer to load. Sometimes it will be like the game has not been started. I'm just sitting at my desktop wondering if it will load up or not, or it will load to a black screen and then nothing...for several minutes then the game loads and I can play.

A couple of games no longer load at all but go into the "not responding" mode.

I reformatted my PC and the problem went away for a short time and now ( a month later) it is back to not working correctly.

The SSD steam is on shows that it is A-OK. Windows 10 is fully updated as well as my video card drivers. No anti virus, fire wall has been disabled, windows 10 game mode deactivated. (maybe I should reactivate it and see if that helps)

I usually have no problems solving my own issues but I am at a loss right now. Origin works fine, loads fast and games load fast. Games installed directly to my HDD load up fine. It seems to be Steam related. I verified integrity of game files multiple times. Uninstalled games and steam several times and still this issue persists.

I think next i will uninstall steam and reinstall it to another SSD to rule that out but my current SSD game drive is fairly new and according to WD dashboard: healthy.

I suppose I'm putting this on the board just to see if anyone else has experienced this and what you did to fix it.

I haven't been on my PC in two days so I haven't tried anything since I posted but this does look promising.

The only thing that trips me out is I have 4 gaming rigs running daily. Mine, my daughter's, my son's, and the kitchen game rig that is used by everyone. None of these computers suffer from this issue. All are on the same network. Just seems strange.

I run into this occasionally when starting Steam. I do not have a problem starting games because I changed the default install folders. Games I play occassionally get put on platter drives, the games that get played a lot will go on an SSD in a folder all its own. The only thing thing left to default is where Steam saves game backups, if I could change this too, I would.